Hacker News Reader

Comment by checker | Hacker News Reader

The author is affiliated with Virginia Governor Youngkin. There is definitely an agenda being pushed here, probably for Youngkin. Interesting that the author is calling for an end to political games within the CDC when he's playing one himself.

Pandemics are hard. If the CDC doesn't present a unified public voice, then a large chunk of the population will latch on to the people they agree with, and no policy would be effective. So I can understand how it came to this.

Ultimately we need someone we can trust running that org (I'm not taking a position here). And not everyone is going to trust them and they will be blamed for any mistakes. Sometimes there isn't time to do the science, so it ends up being an educated guess at maximizing reward vs risk. It's not a position I would want to hold.

View on HN

There is still a lack of common sense. Anyone who looked at the age distribution of covid patients and deaths knows that there are hardly any children getting sick from covid, and everything I heard points to the few ones having almost always other severe diseases (cancer, etc), so covid being the drop in the bucket.

They are still pushing for vaccine mandates for children that will not change anything materially.

The same applies to mask mandates. The only studies I have seen only show a marginal impact on preventing infections. At the same time we are told new variants (omicron) are many times more contagious that the variants the masks were not really stopping in the first place. Mask mandates have become a similar security theatre than bugging old ladies with their liquids at airport security.

The problem is that on insisting on measures that even laymen can tell are bullshit, they are undermining the credibility they will need the day there is something that needs to be done that will make a difference.

Credibility takes decades to build and minutes to lose. Look at Ukraine. No one believed the US intelligence when they claimed Putin was serious about invading, because of the bullshit they pushed 20 years earlier with Iraq.

these objections have been raised and shot down plenty of times. for example, the framing "there are hardly any children getting sick from covid" disregards the utility of reducing children as a transmission vector, and "The only studies I have seen only show a marginal impact on preventing infections" disregards the protection they afford by arbitrarily labeling it as "marginal"

>No one believed the US intelligence when they claimed Putin was serious about invading

I don't know from where you draw this conclusion, considering his track record of doing it previously in Ukraine in 2014, and Georgia before that, and given his moving of an entire army to the border, and subsequently issuing threatening ultimatums to the world they knew the world would never subjugate themselves to

A lot these these conflicts that appear to be about science are really about values. Many of the people making arguments about COVID's relatively low danger to children are doing so because they believe the mitigations (lockdowns, remote schooling, masking) are harmful and not worth the benefit of reducing transmission. While those arguing in favor, believe the costs to children are worth it.

> There is still a lack of common sense. Anyone who looked at the age distribution of covid patients and deaths knows that there are hardly any children getting sick from covid, and everything I heard points to the few ones having almost always other severe diseases (cancer, etc), so covid being the drop in the bucket. > They are still pushing for vaccine mandates for children that will not change anything materially.

I don't really understand this thinking. Yes, covid deaths in the under 18 group are a drop in the bucket compared to covid deaths in other age groups. But that's only because covid had such a massive toll in other age groups. We're still talking over a thousand deaths in the under 18 group, tens of thousands of hospitalizations, and many many more who had symptoms that persisted beyond a month. Even knocking those numbers down by half would be significant.

And, re masks, the general scientific consensus at this point is that yes, masks do have an effect on transmission rates, and the quality of the mask matters in how much of an impact is seen. Mandates also have an impact, although it depends on how much the mandate actually impacts behavior. It's not security theater, but some mandates will be much more effective than others.

And I'll note - US public health authorities did, in my view, lose some credibility on masks. But for different reasons than you mention. Statements early on saying masks weren't necessary for general use I think did a lot of harm. Personally, I can understand - evidence was weaker for general population usage at the time, and there was a dire shortage of even surgical masks for healthcare workers. So, I get that they wanted to avoid even more shortages for healthcare workers, but this original messaging really hurt later on when masks were being recommended. My second complaint is that, once the supply was there for surgical masks (and then for N95 and equivalents), public health authorities were really slow to push better masks, and only meekly did so.

> Credibility takes decades to build and minutes to lose. Look at Ukraine. No one believed the US intelligence when they claimed Putin was serious about invading, because of the bullshit they pushed 20 years earlier with Iraq.

Lots of us who were entirely skeptical of US intelligence re Iraq found US intelligence re Putin's intent to invade entirely believable and plausible.

You are conflating what makes sense to you with what makes sense to most people.

> I don't really understand this thinking. Yes, covid deaths in the under 18 group are a drop in the bucket compared to covid deaths in other age groups. But that's only because covid had such a massive toll in other age groups. We're still talking over a thousand deaths in the under 18 group, tens of thousands of hospitalizations, and many many more who had symptoms that persisted beyond a month. Even knocking those numbers down by half would be significant.

You are ignoring the comorbidities aspect GP was talking about.

> It's not security theater

Cloth masks are security theater. Nobody’s disputing properly worn N95s. GP is talking about what has been pushed for two years and the credibility that has been destroyed. They’re not talking about recent shifts.

> You are ignoring the comorbidities aspect GP was talking about.

Even if we split this into two groups - those under 18 with comorbidities, and those without, there's still good evidence for both groups to get vaccinated. I don't know if there is a good breakdown nationally, but even just looking at NYC, the evidence becomes compelling. NYC has a dataset that breaks down deaths by age group and by comorbidity status:

https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/to...

For under 18, as of 9/11/21 (yes, I wish they'd push a more recent update), 29 total deaths, 19 with an underlying condition, 5 without, and 5 pending/unknown. Underlying conditions by NYC's metric is pretty broad:

> Underlying conditions currently include diabetes, lung disease, cancer, immunodeficiency, heart disease, hypertension, asthma, kidney disease, gastrointestinal/liver disease, and obesity.

So, in New York City alone, and as of nearly a year ago, you had 5 kids under the age of 18 with no known underlying conditions who died of Covid. Just an educated guess, but it's quite plausible we've had 100+ deaths nationally in the under 18 with no underlying conditions group. That alone is pretty strong evidence in favor of vaccinating everyone in the under 18 group, and not just those with underlying conditions.

All that said, the primary reason for vaccine mandates for schools is related to transmission. And here too, there is good efficacy.

Ultimately, the harm/benefit calculation is quite clear in favor of vaccinations for kids, outside of rare scenarios. The main debate is whether the risk of backlash from schools mandating vaccination is worth the clear benefits of increasing vaccine uptake in these age groups.

> Cloth masks are security theater. Nobody’s disputing properly worn N95s. GP is talking about what has been pushed for two years and the credibility that has been destroyed. They’re not talking about recent shifts.

Cloth masks reduce transmission. They're not great at doing so, but they do still have an effect. Surgical masks are better. KN94/N95/etc are much better. Yes, we should have long ago moved to surgical as the minimum viable mask in mask mandate scenarios. It's unfortunate that we didn't. But even still, cloth masks do still help a small amount.

> we've had 100+ deaths nationally in the under 18 with no underlying conditions group. That alone is pretty strong evidence in favor of vaccinating everyone in the under 18 group, and not just those with underlying conditions.

That is perhaps beyond the measure of the study to even conclude that those are properly labelled data points. It is such a small number it would make sense to publish a report detailing exactly how each death played out, when they likely were exposed, by whom, and as best as possible what they were doing each hour of the days leading to death. They may have had no known underlying condition but what was unique about their situation that it led to death? Can this really happen to anyone as you seem to be suggesting? Surely it would be prudent to be sure? Advocating for mandated vaccines based on that slim evidence is not an exercise in harm reduction, its reckless.

It's quite tiresome when some people, on being presented with distressing information about the government, insist that it be ignored because the information doesn't come from left wing sources. Who of course would never report on these stories to begin with. It's a form of psychological defence, not a legitimate response.

"Ultimately we need someone we can trust running that org (I'm not taking a position here)"

Or, those organizations should just be scrapped. There's no fundamental reason a CDC must exist. Sweden's CDC boiled down to one man, and his entire policy response was to tell people to chill out. The country was rewarded with better outcomes than most other places - lower COVID mortality than the European average, less economic damage, way less damage to the fabric of society and so on.

Given the CDC's performance it's pretty clear it has no idea how to control diseases and isn't even institutionally capable of maintaining a very basic, grandmother level understanding of respiratory diseases (natural immunity exists, seasonality is important, not actually everyone will get ill simultaneously, etc).

_sigh_ Do Americans really go and check which team a doctor plays for before deciding whether to take their recommendations seriously? If he was affiliated with a Democratic governor, somehow I don't think it would be brought up with the same implication.

Go read the Wikipedia page for Dr. Makary; he's a well published and awarded researcher, not a partisan hack like your comment makes him out to be. It's distressing to me that in America "he/she supports a different party than I do" is enough reason to cast doubt on an entire career of great work.

America is effectively two nations forced into one at this point.

Doctors were literally paid to push certain drugs. They are not infallible nor perfect, and they can just as easily be paid to say untrue things as anyone else.

> If he was affiliated with a Democratic governor, somehow I don't think it would be brought up with the same implication.

It would be, but from the other side (e.g. Dr Fauci anyone?)

Of course they can, I don't see anyone debating that point. Dr. Makary actually spent part of his career working _against_ profit-seeking doctors and predatory hospitals. I'm not sure why you're bringing that up in the first place, unless you have some specific bone to pick with him, and if you do I'm curious what it is. What you're saying is just as misdirected as if we were talking about engineers and I pointed out that they can be literally paid to write bad code, they are neither infallible nor perfect, and can just as easily be paid to say untrue things as anyone else.

>It would be, but from the other side (e.g. Dr Fauci anyone?)

You've actually illustrated my point very well here. What I'm saying is that it's great that places like HN are largely able to discuss public health at face value, rather than through the Red v. Blue lens that most Americans insist on reducing things to. Unfortunately, as soon as you accuse "the other side" of doing just about anything, your intentions are revealed, the water is muddied, and the discussion becomes useless.

Someone simply mentioned his affiliation. I don't see a problem. This doctor is dabbling in policy, not whether or not my prescription is still good. Policy means politics. His background therefore matters.

> What I'm saying is that it's great that places like HN are largely able to discuss public health at face value, rather than through the Red v. Blue lens that most Americans insist on reducing things to.

Not really true anymore, sadly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com